Goa, India - Cooking Class

Goa, India

Rita's Gourmet Goa

April 17, 2018

We docked in Goa at 7am. It was almost time for our cooking class! We walked off the ship and since we got off so early we got to hear the entertainment that the ship had provided. There was an Indian woman in a bright green dress and a guy with a big crown on his head with a cape. Let's not forget the band that played Hello Dolly. 

While we were waiting for our driver to show up, there were 2 guys rolling a cart with a table cloth over it. Turns out that in the bins being covered by the white table cloth was everybody's passports! Anyway the driver picked us up in his nice air-conditioned car and we were off to our Goa cookng class. 

Last year when we were in Goa, India we took the same cooking class (Rita's Gourmet Goa) and loved it so much we decided to do it again. When we arrived at the cooking class we were welcomed by Rita and an ice cold water. My Dad and Rita talked for a bit while my Mom and I made Chai tea with one of Rita's helpers.

 Chai tea has cinnamon, black pepper corns, cardamon, cloves, star anise and some black tea. When we finished the chai tea it smelled so good with all the spices, and after I added some sugar it was excellent. 

After we made the Chai tea Rita brought some date and walnut cake and some weird cookie to have with our tea. When we finished our tea and cookies. It was time for breakfast.

 After breakfast we got back in the air-conditioned car again and went to the market! 

We got to the market and learned all about the different fruit and veggies that they use in  Indian cooking. There is a long vegetable called drumstick. They use drumstick in a lot of the soups, curries and stir fry's. 

We also learned about the different kinds of peppers. The smallest one is the hottest. The biggest one is the most mild and it is called the kashmiri chili. We used the Kashmiri chili a lot because my Mom is a spice wimp. 

We saw kittens under a table at the fish market and we saw a cow walking down the street.

After we went to the market we came back to Rita's and started cooking. I started making the vegetable samosa first, it turned out amazing. We even made the samosa dough from scratch, but who knew folding a samosa was super hard.





My Mom was making prawn puffs, that are out of this world. The prawn puffs have bechemel inside!! The dough for the prawn puffs was amazing! We put egg wash on it and then engulfed it in bread crumbs and fried it. There were none left.






My Dad was making Aloo Gobi mutter. Aloo means potatoes. Gobi is Califlower and mutter is peas.





The next dish I made was Chicken Vindaloo. Chicken Vindaloo is originally made with pork but in India, the hindu people do not eat pork or beef. The Chicken Vindaloo was a bit sour because we put dry mango powder in it. Dry mango powder is used to add acid to a recipe. Kind of like we use lemon juice. Dry mango powder is made by taking a mango and cutting it in half, then you lay it out to sun dry for a couple days with kosher salt on top. After it has sun dried, you grind it up with a mortar and pestle and it is ready to go.




Lastly, my Mom made Butter Paneer. Is is like Butter Chicken, but with paneer (a type of cheese) instead of chicken. The sauce is like a tikka sauce and we will definitely be making it when we get home.



It was great to see Rita again, and the food was delicious!

Cochin (Kochi), India - Part 3

Cochin, India
April 15, 2018

Cochin, India Part 3


We got on the ferry to go back to the cruise ship. They stopped the boat but for like 3 seconds (I am not joking a guy jumped on with his bike while the ferry was moving) that is how fast it was going. That means that we missed the stop and we were headed to the next stop Fort Kochi. Since Fort Kochi was originally where we had planned on going, we got off the boat. Everybody was rushing to get onto the boat and we barely made it off!




By now, we were hungry so my Dad navigated to a hotel that had food and drinks. When we got there, there was a guard at the gate and a security walk thru thing. 





We had a look at the menu and I immediately saw Parmesan onion rings and we ordered them! We also ordered chicken curry, garlic naan, butter naan, tiger shrimp with pickled onions and coconut rice.



My Mom and Dad got some drinks too (besides water). My Mom got an eggnog and my Dad got spicy melon juice with Vodka.








They had a really cool table decoration.. A baby pineapple! It was so cute! Anyway after my Dad took pictures of the baby pineapple we got our food.








We were served all of our food in really tiny portions by our server.




The Chicken curry with the coconut rice was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. 

My Dad also got sticky tweety fries (they were on the kids menu). Sticky tweety fries and fries fried with butter sprinkled with parmesean.

The tiger shrimp with the onions good as well everything was good. They also had this really good curry ketchup that was out of this world.











Then dessert came around... I got plum doughnuts with sugar syrup (like I had in Abu Dabi 1 year ago). They were not as good as the ones in Abu Dabi that we did in a cooking class but they were pretty good. Then after dessert we ordered a taxi from the hotel.




We sat down at one of there comfy chairs and waited. While we were waiting I realized that there decor for the table was a little goldfish in a bowl.





They also had this beautiful mural when you first walk in. It was of a dock. There was a lot going on there were people getting on ships and getting of the ships.




Then in the middle of the room they had a fountain with water petals and fish (My Dad assumed that when the goldfish in the bowl got to big they would put them in the fountain.






After looking around the place our taxi came and we went back to the cruise ship.

Cochin (Kochi), India - Part 2

Cochin, India
April 15, 2018

Cochin, India Spice Markets etc. Part 2




When we were walking past all the stalls and spice stands I noticed some shops that had little hills of bright colors. We walked up to one of those stands and apparently they are used for hand art, paint and much more. You just add some water to the vibrant powder and you can draw stuff on your hand leg and on canvas.



The guy who had the shop demonstrated by drawing a clover with magenta powder on my Mom's hand.


The guy also sold fragrances. My Dad tried one that he said was the same ingredients as Hugo Boss's cologne. I tried perfume on the was made out of the Himalayan flower. It smelled so good - it was very sweet.



I got 150 milliliters of the Himalayan flower perfume. The guy did not use a funnel or anything to pour the perfume in just his hands and he did not even lose a single drop of the perfume.




Then we headed into one of the spice markets. When we walked in we were greeted by our spice helper. She told us everything we wanted to know about the spices and more. They had all organic spices, but they were super expensive because they were organic. We tried some Masala tea (no that does not have anything to do with chicken tikka masala), we also tried some mango and ginger gummies. They were organic as well but the mango one actually tasted like you were eating a fresh mango. Then our spice helper let us smell some vanilla beans. They smelled so good. She said that in each one they had over 1,000 seeds in them and that they would last for 5 years. But since they were organic they were extremely expensive. There were so many spices like: Cardamon, Cinnamon, pepper, ginger, tumeric and much more. The spice market had other stuff to like scarfs, table runners, jewelry, towels and little souvenirs. They even had a lady in the middle of the room making a scarf with a huge handmade machine.

Then after we went to the spice market we went back to the same place we got my Himalayan flower perfume to get some tee tree oil for a friend. After we got the tee tree oil and got out a bunch more offers to give us tours from tuk-tuks we made it back to the ferry to go back to the ship but that will be in  Part 3 of Cochin India which will be coming soon!